Whether your choice of sport is Zumba, CrossFit or Aerobics – we all get really excited for new workout gear, bags, shoes and accessories that are good for our sport/hobby. The following is a list of high quality workout gear or clothes that an athletic mom would love for Mother’s Day.

First and foremost, is the sexiest workout/all day bag I’ve seen yet.  It’s pink and satiny and would fit three pairs of shoes, a laptop, a yoga mat and extra clothes.  Check out this “Bliss” bag from Lululemon.

Sparkly jewels for Mother’s Day are always a hit with the moms I know.  Bronwen Online has been featured in Title IX, Athleta, Jans Outfitting, and Sundance stores, and has some amazing handcrafted jewelry designed for us adventurous types. The jewelry, inspired by motion, is perfect for any mom who considers her style “Adventure Chic” or “Gypset”. I particularly recommend the simple and sexy Amazon earrings.

Of course, there is nothing better than a relaxing massage that comes with pre arranged childcare.  I little TLC goes a long way with moms.

Manduka yoga mats are the premium yoga mat that all yogis love.  Its super thick, non-slip surface can get you into, and out of, the hardest yoga poses. These mats are the most coveted of yoga mats and last for years. A must for any mom who loves to do yoga.

Finally, if your family members are brave enough to walk into a workout gear shop for women, we love new crops, tanks and fitted jackets.  Those of us who really love our workout gear can be caught wearing them all day – especially if we know we look good in them. A new outfit is a perfect way to show off that new muscle tone.

Shop this set at Polyvore

It doesn’t need to be that way. If your goal is to get fit, all you need is fifteen minutes and a commitment.  Some of my hardest workouts take than ten minutes.  They are all out efforts, with heavy weights, but still they take almost no time at all. I’ve also learned I can get them done with my kids right there in the room.

It’s difficult for moms to find time to exercise. Whether it’s work, family commitments, carpool, homework, errands, doctor appointments, or some other stress – it’s hard to find the time to exercise. I get it! However, the most important thing you can do for yourself is to stay fit, so you may be around for the long term.  You want to be able to hold your grandchild and be mobile for years to come.

So, what do you have to do just to “squeeze in some exercise”?  Make one small change at a time, and you will see results. Make the commitment to exercise each day. And here’s how you can do it in 15 minutes or less.

Implement the 50 rep/3 minute rule.

Take one exercise and do 50 reps, taking less than three minutes to complete. For example, I can do 50 push-ups in under 3 minutes.  This exercise can be highly valuable for upper body strength, it can be done anywhere, and can be scaled for whatever level you are.

You can also do 50 reps of air squats, lunges, burpees, or sit-ups.  Anything you choose, should be an all out effort for 3 minutes. Implement five of these a day for fifteen minutes, and call it a workout.

Exercising is highly beneficial for your health, your strength, and your overall morale. It’s also nice to know you don’t have to go anywhere to do them.  You don’t need special equipment and you can do them in your street clothes.  You can do them with your kids.  If you were really adventurous, you could put the lightest child on your back and do as many push-ups as possible.

If you have more questions, leave a comment.  I’m here to help.

But what if you’re a mom trying to get around on a bike? It’s actually easy to take the baby, with many options starting at six months of age.  The general rule of thumb is that your child needs to be able to hold his own head up and preferably be able to wear a helmet. Then just pick the best option that suits you:

Front Mount

The first option for carrying your child is a front mounted child carrier.  These bike seats attach to your handlebars and can carry a child up to 38 pounds.  Essentially, the seat can keep your child happy up until age 3 or 4 depending on the size of your child.  They truly love that style of riding because they can see everything from a high viewpoint.

Rear Mount

Another option is for a similar attachment to the back of the bike.  These rear attaching bicycle seats work in the same fashion as the front, and are good for children up to 40 pounds.

Burley

My favorite option is the “Burley” style of bike carrier.  These child carriers work both as a jogging trailer as well as bicycle carrier.  They are a bit pricier in the $300 dollar range, but are well worth their money in child comfort and in longevity.  These carriers, if you buy a double, can last multiple years.  It’s likely that older children can ride in it until they are at least seven years old.  It can also double as a grocery carrier with one child, if mom was up for a workout.  The trailer plus a child can range up to 50-100 pounds, which may limit how far you choose to travel.  H

Tag-A-Long

When your child can ride their own bike, they would be ready for a tag-a-long attachment.  These are fun, but, will require more skill of the driver.  If the child is at all wobbly, it takes a bit of practice to control the bicycle.  In addition, tag-a-longs work great when there are multiple children on a ride.  The oldest child gets the tag-along and the younger one can sit in a different seat.

The best part of bike riding with your kids is the message you are sending to them.  If they grow up watching you be active, it is highly likely that they will want to be active as well.

Many women’s health magazines say you can get great, toned arms if you do their prescribed exercises (in 4 weeks or less).  I am here to argue that you can’t get those arms doing what they say.  It is my belief that most women featured in Women’s Health Magazines are:

1. Too skinny
2. Don’t really have sexy, toned arms
3. Don’t eat enough protein or healthy fats to really get defined arms

What kind of arms do you want?  The kind that are simply toned or do you want real womanly arms with visible muscle, like Michelle Obama?  I want the real thing – the definition that shows … the arms where you get stopped on the street and asked, “What do you do to look like that?” That is a compliment to me and if I’m fielding them every day, I’d be thrilled.

So, here are my suggestions to get killer arms. Eat well and use weights. It should be noted that you can’t have both unhealthy foods and killer arms.  In order to get and see results, the diet has to change at the same time you add a weight training routine to your schedule.

Keep your diet really clean.  The advice on food in most magazines is low-fat nonsense. Eggs and bacon are not the enemy – sugar and processed white flour foods are worse for you.  My typical breakfast consists of leftover dinner plus an egg or two.  I love avocados, coconut oil and nuts – and I eat plenty of protein in whatever source it comes in conveniently and fast – chicken, ground beef, steak, fish, tuna or sliced deli meat.  When cooking, I often make two meals at once so there is enough leftovers for breakfast and lunch.

I’ve previously written about the benefits of strength training here, and my absolute best suggestions for awesome arms are to include strict chest-to-deck push ups, Turkish Get-Ups, Handstand Push-ups, Shoulder Press, and Bench Dips.

Moms, I can’t emphasise this enough – you need to have a strong upper body to hold, carry, and love your children. You need to be able to put 25-pound boxes of detergent over your head on the shelf.   You need to be able to carry old Christmas decorations to the garage and put them away without asking your husband to help or do it for you.  The best method for learning how to lift weights is to seek out a trainer at a local gym and ask for specific exercises to increase upper body strength – particularly using dumbbells rather than any weight machine.

Good luck, and have fun showing off your guns.

January can be a tough month for a lot of people.  You may have overspent or over ate or over drank or just plain overdid it during the holiday season.  Knowing you overdid it may lead to unhealthy thoughts about yourself.  Now, it’s January and you’d like to clean up your act, right?  There is no reason to look back and moan and groan about what you should have or could have done.  What better time than the present to refocus and plan for an exceptional year?

The following is a list of tips on how to recapture that old YOU- the happy and healthy one.  Remember that feeling when you achieved something you’d been working towards for a long time?  That feeling of accomplishment.  Those feelings can be found again simply by turning your focus on to the YOU.

The best tip I can offer anyone is to learn how to lift weights and set strength goals for yourself.  I know my strengths in all my lifts from the Shoulder Press to the Deadlift and I have a number in my head of what I’d like to be lifting in 2012.  So, with that in mind, even when I get little jumps in strength, it is a feel good moment for me which can seriously boost my self-confidence.   In fact, knowing that I can lift more than my husband’s weight is a huge “Gee, I feel good about myself, feeling”.  Following some heavy lifting, I love to do high intensity work on either a bike or a rower.  There’s nothing like that endorphin high I get from exerting myself.

Other tips include:

Adopt a dog and take a walk outside every day, if the weather allows.  What a great way to enjoy the benefits of the sun, along with getting some light exercise and giving your dog what he or she always wants to do!

Always keep your eyes on the prize. YOU- feeling good.  Never compare your progress with anyone else’s.  This leads you down the wrong road.  Focus on what you can do and just try to keep a healthy balance between exercise and life.

Make dinner for a friend or neighbor and deliver it.  This is one of the best gifts I’ve ever been given as well as received.

Establish a night time routine and stick to it.  Losing even one hour of sleep can effect your overall performance and feelings of confidence.  There are so many benefits for sleeping well and getting enough sleep.

This year I plan to start the New Year off on the R.I.G.H.T. foot:

R … Be Realistic in choosing goals

I … Invite Others to Join You

G … Go Out and Do It

H … Highlight on a Calender Your Goals with Achievable Dates

T … Talk to Yourself

The most important aspect of choosing and setting goals is to be realistic.  A realistic goal would be to improve your time in the mile by 30 seconds in a 2 month training period.  An unrealistic goal would be to run a marathon when you’ve never run farther than 1!  Write it on your calender with examples of how you will achieve your goal on a weekly or monthly basis.  Another good goal would be to be able to perform 20 push-ups unbroken with perfect form in one month.

Invite your friends and family to join you.  Whether you want to lose 5 pounds or twenty…tell your friends and ask them to support you in your goals.  Use your social networks such as Facebook, Twitter or Google Plus to help you stay accountable to your friends.  There are also quite a few helpful websites to help keep you on track, Daily Feats is one I like.

Make a plan to GET IT DONE.  Have a positive attitude, tell yourself you can do it, talk to yourself out loud if you have to.”Come on Rachel” is one I use regularly when the weight is heavy or if I just don’t want to pick up the barbell one more time.

Get a large desktop calender or use a fancy app on your phone to set reasonable, achievable goals– such as today, I will be able to do 5 unbroken push-ups with perfect form.

Choose two.  Having more than one goal in any area will help you keep a balanced approach to life.  Hopefully, not to add stress to your life, but to add variety. Also, when you hit one goal, then you’ll be more than ready to work on the next one.  Involve the family.  By getting your immediate family involved in one of your personal goals, there is going to be family goals that come out of it as well.  A few years back, we all raced our bikes on the same day, and I’d love to see that happen again.

When I was a mother of a newborn, I remember thinking I could eat anything I want. That included iced mochas, pumpkin pie, cookies, whatever.  I was always athletic, but had a healthy appetite for food.  I thought working out gave me the okay to eat whatever I chose. Wrong. My daily iced mocha added up to 350 EMPTY high sugar calories a day. That was an extra pound every week and a half.

My children are now 8 and 5, so I’ve had plenty of time to make every mistake in the book as far as diet and exercise. But I’ve worked to implement many health changes. I’ve gone from eating oatmeal for breakfast to steak and eggs. I no longer pack high calorie expensive “snack bars,” eat peanut butter daily, or eat bread, rice and pasta on a regular basis.  Instead, I’ve changed my diet to a mainly protein, vegetable and healthy fat diet with a few fruits and nuts thrown in for good measure.

This did not happen overnight.  The more I read about health, the more aware of my food choices I became. I started making small changes. Gradually, I gave up the sugary coffee drinks, first.  Diet Soda (for me anyway) went out years ago.  Then, mainly because of hunger, I gave up my daily oatmeal for breakfast.  I would be ravenous by 10:00 am and would eat anything on hand because I was too hungry. Another priority was to eat together every night.  And I edited my weekly exercise plan to include 2-3 days of heavy lifting instead of a 3 mile run (see Let’s Get Some Muscle Mom).

You can change your life.  Small changes over time, really can change your health and your shape.  You could even start with something really simple like giving up the sugar in your coffee.

The following are just a few suggestions of things you can do, right now, to make small changes in your diet and health for the better.

• Substitute rice for a vegetable at dinner.
• Instead of cheese and crackers for a snack, have carrots and hummus
• Ditch the diet soda for bubbly water or Coconut Water.   Check out this article on diet soda.
• Instead of long, slow distance running, switch it up and do two days of heavy lifting.  Heavy lifting has been shown to be MORE beneficial than any running you could ever do.

What small changes will you make this new year?

The following are examples of how our family is going to de-stress from the holidays.

When in doubt, cut it.   Avoid overbooking yourself at all costs.  One during the week commitment is more than enough.  One weekend commitment is plenty as well!  Social engagements can be exciting but time spent with people you love, you can’t get back.

Make a decision to not be perfect.  This has drastically improved my ability to function during the holidays.  New Years Eve cards work just as well as Christmas cards and it gives you a week longer to get them done.   Email cards can be equally creative and enjoyable for family members to read.

Get outside.  Instead of using the TV as a rest, simply take a walk.  It’s much more enjoyable and you can reap the exercise benefits as well.  Just 30 minutes a day of just walking has been shown to be extremely effective in benefiting your health.

Learn how to donate, give away and re-gift used toys.  Be thankful for the things you have, and learn to live with less.  Children (at least mine) very rarely reuse toys.  They are much more creative and love to make up their own games- so gifts that encourage creativity and communication are much more valuable to them.

Have a leftover party.  Bring gifts, food, and wines that were used during the actual holiday and share them.  What better way to spend an evening than with friends and family.

Stop.  Take a minute and breathe in and out.  Think about lowering your stress level by engaging your brain in breath (see more on yogic breathing here.) Yoga, in combination, with some simple yoga breathing can be highly beneficial in reducing stress and elevating moods.   By simply, engaging yourself in 2-3 poses a day with your kids, can change your stress level and by involving your kids,  and have more fun.  Our favorites are Down Dog, Legs Up the Wall, and Turtle on a Rock.  Leah Kalish has written some wonderful books and videos for kids and yoga.

… or how the movie “Ratatouille” has changed our cooking life.

If there is one thing that has drastically changed our cooking life, it would be the movie Ratatouille.  It left such an impression on my children’s brains, sometimes I have to beg them to get out of the kitchen.  “If you go take your bath now, when, you come back, you can do the cooking,” is how it usually goes.

Both my children have been actively involved in cooking since they were old enough to stand or sit on the counter or from a stool.  They love to peel carrots, chop vegetables, roll pizza dough or do anything at all that involves cooking, eating and tasting.  One of my biggest priorities is family dinners, so, having the kids in the kitchen is all part of it.  And, if you have children under the age of 5, having them in the kitchen with you is also a management technique.

In a previous article, I wrote about my five best time saving pieces of equipment, but, there is more to the story.  The story is really in teaching my kids how to cook. I hope when they are older and start cooking for their friends and future girlfriends, it makes a huge difference in their lives.  For now, I let them take charge in the kitchen for the most part. If they want to cook noodles or macaroni, I let them. I am there to facilitate their needs and be on safety patrol.

Yes, there will be a mess to clean up, children are not necessary attune to cleanliness, but, I don’t care as long as they are being careful.  Let them stick their fingers in everything and taste all of it.   Currently, my youngest son loves to cook the food, but doesn’t always like to eat it.  But, we made a deal that he must TRY all the foods he cooks.

The easiest way to get your kids involved in cooking is to make it fun.

• Jazz up your nightly cooking chore into a singing, dancing, and stirring party.
• Consider getting everybody an individualized apron and chef hat.  These flirty aprons are super cute for moms and Etsy has a wide variety of aprons for boys and girls.
• Buy them their own cooking tools that are kid friendly.
• Gather a few  kid cookbooks.  My kids and I, particularly, like Everyday Paleo by Sarah Fragoso.   She even has some new books coming out next spring just for kids (Paleo Pals: Jimmy and the Carrot Rocket Ship and The Paleo Pals Cookbook).

Teaching your children how to cook is a lifetime skill that can be perfected until their old!  Make it part of your daily life.

By having time saving methods for getting holiday dinners on the table in 30 minutes or less you drastically improve both your mood and your health.  This is not the time of year to gain 5 pounds.  My five best pieces of cooking equipment include a sharp knife, a crockpot, a large ceramic baking dish, a heaping quantity of spices and tin foil.  With these five things on hand all the time, I can have dinner on the table in no time.

The most important item in my kitchen is a knife.  I use the same knife to cut veggies and bacon into bits as well as any other thing needing cutting.  A good one (like this Shun) is not cheap, but, I could not live without it.

Next up is a Crockpot which can mean the difference of having dinner on the table with little to no cooking, preparing or mixing.  1 Large Ceramic Baking Dish is also a must have.  Between the crockpot and the ceramic dish, I can make multiple meals in one dish.  Roasted root veggies plus a bone-in chicken is fast, easy and hard to mess up.  Finally, a few accessories that I can’t live without are tin foil and Penzey’s spices.  By wrapping a fish fillet up with some veggies and butter into a tin foil wrap and baking for 30 minutes, you can have an easy to clean up, healthy dinner.

The following are a list of meals you can cook at a moment’s notice with links to the recipes.

• Tin Foil Fish Packets with assorted veggies
• Baked Chicken or Turkey with root veggies
• Ground Beef with Tomatoes, Onions, and Bell Peppers
• Sausage and Peppers (Italian Style)
• Beef Stew in the Crockpot

Finally, I’d like to add that if you take the time to plan meals in advance, with your kids, you will be more likely to get food on the table.  Also, by keeping your social engagements to a minimum during the week, you can maintain a stable environment.  I am truly thankful to have dinner with my family most nights of the week at home with food cooked by me.  See Prioritizing Family Habits to read more on how I attempt to remain sane during the busy months ahead.